The actor and dancer Marika Rivera, who has died aged 90, shared with her father, the muralist Diego Rivera, an imposing physique and determined character. However, it was to her mother, Marie Vorobieff Stebelska – better known as Marevna and generally regarded as the world's first female cubist painter – to whom she displayed unfailing loyalty after Rivera abandoned them both to return to his native Mexico when his first daughter was less than two years old.

Born in Paris, near her mother's studio in Montparnasse, Marika grew up in the heart of La Ruche – the artists' residence known as "the beehive". The narrow streets nearby buzzed with talent and she remembered meeting Picasso – "He loved my mother, and I heard he teased my father, saying I was his daughter" – Modigliani and the shy artist Chaim Soutine. Much later, Soutine would move in with Marevna and become a father figure to Marika, who soon earned a reputation for being as headstrong as her mother.

She married young, to the French set decorator Jean-Paul Brusset, a friend and collaborator of Jean Cocteau. After ballet training, she joined performers entertaining the French forces in North Africa in the early days of the second world war. Conditions were uncomfortable – Marika arrived by boat and had to wade ashore carrying her belongings – but early deprivations had toughened her spirit.

In Algiers, Marika, a dark-haired, statuesque beauty, won a following among the troops while Brusset painted and decorated where he could – notably the interior of the Voice of America radio station. A son, Jean, was born, but the marriage foundered and Marika led a peripatetic life in the south of France until she met Rodney Phillips, the English publisher of Polemic magazine.

They were married in 1949. Phillips owned the magnificent Athelhampton House, near Dorchester, and the family, including Marevna, Jean and their own son, David, went to live there, where they were photographed by Angus McBean. But the couple parted and Marika moved her mother and sons to London. She attended drama school before landing some memorable film cameo roles, most notably alongside Julie Christie in Darling (1965), in Girl On a Motorcycle (1968), in the 1971 version of Fiddler On the Roof and in Eat the Rich (1987), a cheeky caper produced by the Comic Strip team. She also tried her hand at a cabaret act, Marika's Cafe Theatre, at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in west London.

But her thoughts had turned increasingly to Mexico from where, after a silence lasting many years, her father had called her, begging her to come to him. "I asked if he wanted just me or my mother as well and when he said that he only wanted to see me, and me alone, I refused. How I regret that now."

In her dreams, however, she flew to his side to comfort him after the death of his third wife, the painter Frida Kahlo, whom Marika had disliked ever since an attempt to reach Rivera had been intercepted by Kahlo. "Every time I called him, she said he wasn't there," Marika said. "Sometimes I could hear him in the background. Once, she just hung up."

She thought often about returning to Mexico, although her one previous trip had been uncomfortable – she felt rejected by Rivera's two daughters by his second marriage, to Guadalupe Marín. Instead, she asked me to go on her behalf to the beautiful chapel at Chapingo, outside Mexico City, which is almost womb-like in its structure, and where Diego Rivera had, she claimed, painted the walls and ceiling with images inspired by Marika and Marevna. She told many stories, often with a great sense of humour – she loved to tease – and would drift off into impassioned French, especially when warning of the ways of men.

She was tireless in working for wider recognition for her mother, who died in 1984. When Marika left London to live in Dorset a few years ago, she and David needed to find a suitable place for what remained of Marevna's work in private hands. That she was able to attend the opening in 2006 of the gallery specially built at Athelhampton to house the collection gave her immense pleasure, as did the fact that the present owners of the house care for the works as she did.

Marika is survived by her two sons.

•Marika Rivera Phillips, dancer and actor, born 13 November 1919; died 14 January 2010